


Chinatown

by ignipes



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-13
Updated: 2006-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They drove three hundred miles out of their way to visit an old woman in Chinatown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chinatown

Dean is waiting on the corner when Sam steps outside.

"Hey."

"What'd she say?" Dean doesn't turn around; he's standing with his back to the buildings, hands in his pockets, watching a homeless man stumble along the sidewalk.

Sam glances at the neon red sign and the window above it. He thinks he sees the curtain move slightly, fall back into place as somebody steps away, but he can't be sure. "Nothing."

"Nothing?" Dean looks at him then, over his shoulder with his eyebrows raised disbelief. "We drove three hundred miles out of our way to see some crazy old Chinese psychic who doesn't even speak English--" _and wouldn't even let me stay in the room_, he doesn't say, but Sam hears the unspoken annoyance and distrust, "--and she says _nothing_?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Sam doesn't answer right away. He takes a few steps and exhales slowly, rolls his shoulders and looks up, past the caged-in storefronts, past the skyscrapers, toward the dark sky. The air is heavy with mist, the streets wrapped in that peculiar mixture of grime and glisten that only happens in cities after a rainfall.

"She--"

He had felt like a giant before the tiny woman in her tiny parlor, surrounded by heavy red and gold curtains and strings of jade beads, folded awkwardly onto a delicate chair and holding his breath in the oppressive silence and waiting for the old woman's rail-thin granddaughter to serve tea and translate in a soft, papery voice Sam could barely hear.

Dean is watching him curiously. "She what?"

It's reassuring to be outside again, to listen to cars slicing across wet pavement and the steady mechanical rumble of the cable beneath California Street, to stand beside Dean and let the world fall back into proportion.

"She laughed," Sam says. "She just... _laughed_."

Cackled, wheezed, coughed, rocked forward and back in her wheelchair, there are a lot of ways to describe it, but any way he looked at it the old woman had been laughing at him. Her granddaughter was horrified, fixing Sam with the most intimidating glare a four-foot-nine Chinese teenager could muster, but the old woman had only laughed and laughed and laughed until Sam worried that she might choke and decided it was best for all of them if he showed himself to the door.

"She laughed at you." Dean looks like he doesn't quite believe it.

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"She didn't say," Sam snaps, suddenly annoyed. "I just asked her... you know."

Dean nods; he knows.

"And she started laughing."

Frowning, Dean turns on his heels and starts walking down the hill, past the cheap souvenir shops and window displays full of polished dark wood and colorful stones. His pace is fast, determined, and Sam follows without a word.

Dean doesn't speak again until they're a few blocks past the gate, back amongst the fashionably overpriced stores and office buildings empty for the night.

"What I don't get," Dean says finally, stopping on a curb as a bus rolls past, "is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"I don't know, Dean."

"Well, I think--" Dean looks quickly at Sam and away again. "I say we go with 'good' and call it a night. You think there's any place to get a decent drink around here? I mean a real drink, not a frickin' ten dollar purple martini."

Shaking his head and smiling, Sam looks each of the four ways on the intersection, up the hills and down. "I'm sure we can find something. This way?"

Dean doesn't move right away. "Is that -- you're okay with that?"

"Finding a bar? Sure, we can--"

"No, I mean, the old woman." Dean looks down, scuffs his shoe on the pavement, looks up again with an unreadable expression. "With what she -- just, you know, is this something you want to talk about? You really okay with it?"

Twenty-four years. Twenty-four years he's known his brother, and Dean still manages to surprise him at the weirdest damn moments.

"Yeah," Sam says, meaning it. "I'm okay."

"Right," Dean replies, and Sam knows he's not imagining the relief in his voice. "This way?"

They walk another block before Sam adds, "It sounds insane, but I think it was a happy laugh. Not, you know, a crazy laugh." Or taunting, mocking, cruel, anything else they both know it could have been. He pauses for a second in front of a jewelry store and tries not to look at his reflection in the darkened windows. "Like maybe she saw something that -- that wasn't all bad."

"Or maybe." Dean shrugs and his lips twist in a smile. "Or maybe she's completely senile and mistook you for a chimpanzee in a clown suit."

"Or that," Sam agrees.

He's fine with it either way.


End file.
